The New Letter
When looking at a direct mail letter, does your eye stop at the top of the page and focus on the headline centered in the Johnson box, or move elsewhere?
If, like most direct mail marketers, your biggest concern is achieving a good overall ROI against rising postage and production costs, testing a single letter element like a Johnson box may not be the first item on your agenda.
Instead, today there is less testing of individual elements in a letter, as direct mailers are testing entire packages or formats. "Budgets are shrinking, and there's a lot less testing — publishers are taking controls and trying to squeeze the most out of them," says Ruth Sheldon, a New York-based copywriter and marketer.
